Contents

Neverball

Roll a ball through an obstacle course with your mouse!

Use your mouse to tilt the floor, to roll a ball through an obstacle course within the given time. If the ball falls or the time expires, a ball is lost. The goal is to direct the ball so that you collect a certain number of colored coins and then reach the finish point. The more coins you collect, the higher your score. Neverball is part puzzle game, part action game, and entirely a test of skill! The current version includes 75 Neverball levels for pure fun. It's trickier than it sounds!

General Information

Installing and Running

Neverball is available under the Fedora repository, and can be installed using the yum tool. To install, either use a front-end tool (like yumex) or issue the following command in a terminal as root:

yum install neverball

This will grab the game and all its dependencies from the Internet, so you need to be connected to the Internet. After installing, you can run the program under the menu:

Applications -> Games -> Neverball

Or press ALT+F2 on your desktop (or go to a terminal like gnome-terminal and konsole), type neverball, and press Enter.

Configuration

The default configuration should be fine with modern systems. You are able to just start the game and play, but if you're willing to tweak the game, for better gameplay and graphics adjustments, then there are two ways to go: The Options in-game menu and the configuration file located in $HOME/.neverball/neverballrc (where $HOME is your users' home directory).

Basic configuration can be done in the Options in-game menu. Just run the game, select this option and you can: Toggle full screen on/off, setting resolution size in window mode, configuring graphics (textures, geometry, reflection, background, shadow), and audio (quality, volume).

More information about configuration can be seen in Neverball's readme file, located in /usr/share/doc/neverball-<version>/README (where <version> is the game's current version).

One special feature is that the mouse sensitivity can be adjusted, and this affects gameplay deeply. This specific setting is a configured setting mouse_sense to a given number in the configuration file neverballrc. The default value is 300, and a smaller number means more sensitivity. Experienced players sometimes will find this option useful.

Gameplay

After starting the game, move your mouse carefully and try to move the ball along to collect as many coins as possible. The initial 'easy' course also contains some in-game instructions on how to play and presents some challenges for the beginner player. You must collect the specified coins number (or more), and reach the final target before the time runs out, all this without letting the ball fall of the table.

Red coins are worth 5 coins, and Blue coins are worth 10. When you get 100+ coins, you get an extra ball. There is also tele-transporters, moving platforms, holes, moving blocks and many more obstacles. It's up to you to surpass them and make a real score!

Game Controls

While playing, the mouse motion tilts the floor, and the mouse buttons rotate the camera. If you have a joystick configured, this can be used too.

Also, there are other options accessible by pressing these keyboard keys:

SPACE - Pause/Resume (This releases the mouse on window mode too)

ESC - End Game/Exit

SHIFT - Fast camera rotation

F1 - Default Camera

F2 - Lazy Camera

F3 - Static Camera

F7 - Toggle wire mode

F8 - Toggle nice mode

F9 - Toggle frame counter

F10 - Take a screenshot (and writes to your home directory)

F12 - Toggle look-around mode

Replays

Neverball has the ability to record and replay your performance on its levels. After finishing a level, you can save your reply under a chosen name. It will be saved on .neverball under your home directory. By default, the most recent unsaved level will be automatically saved to a file named Last. This gives you the hability to copy and share your replays freely with friends, or getting experienced players' replays and learn from them.

A player community has arisen for Neverball. You can find a hall of fame with many replays at the Nevertable - Neverball Hall Of Fame . A user forum where you can share stories and levels with other players is available at the Neverforum .

Copying the replays into your directory will automatically include them into the Replay menu in-game.